PURNIMA’S REFORMATION

Women have been crucial operators in insurgencies in Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh and Kashmir. This excerpt from She Goes to War is about Purnima, once a dreaded killer

betrayed the organization.’ The man was frightened out of his wits. He meekly stepped outside and started to walk with Purnima to a dark field. His weeping wife followed, pleading with Purnima to spare his life. When they reached the field ‘she flung herself in front to cover him. She told me to shoot her instead. My men tried to pull her away from him so that I could shoot him. In the scuffle her phenak came undone. Her innaphi tore. She was naked but she did not care or even realize it. All she wanted was to save her husband. It struck me then how women want to save lives and here I am, a woman, killing people without a thought.’

As the woman wept and pleaded, the mobile phone in Purnima’s pocket rang. ‘My commander wanted to know if I was done with the assassination.’ Purnima had changed in that one moment. She told a lie. ‘I fired in the air and told my senior that I had shot the man.’ She then told the man she had been sent to kill to run away with his wife and never be seen again in the area. She told her own men that if they ever sneaked on her, she knew how to deal with them. ‘As I turned to leave I saw the man take off his sarong and cover his wife. She looked up at him with tearful eyes and said apologetically that she had not realized she was naked. For the first time I understood what love is and what wonders it can do.’

...From the night Purnima spared the life of the man she was assigned to assassinate she felt revulsion for the work she had been carrying out. ‘I felt that extortion, killing and even recruiting people for militant groups was not good. Violence was not the answer. Love was.’ But she also knew that leaving the organization or fleeing was not an easy option. ‘Once you are given a registration number, you cannot leave without permission of the leaders. Those who escape are hunted down and killed.’ She started to distance herself from her work. ‘I told my leaders that I now felt tired and less confident. They thought I wanted to leave and start another faction. I convinced them that was not the case.’ Her lack of interest in jobs she routinely took on earlier was soon evident. ‘They realized I was no longer the lethal disciplined killer and may slip up while on an assignment. They let me go.’ The year was 2008...

After a day of one of my long conversations with her, she asks me to return to her shack late evening. As I walk into her shack, I see her lying motionless in her bed... What has happened? I inquire... I am told that Purnima goes through this whenever she is overcome by ‘negativity’... ‘...it is the pain of her days of violence which you made her relive that has made her ill,’ her daughter tells me... She will be fine in a day or so... I turn to leave with the thought that a journey from a destitute to a dreaded militant to a faith healer leaves its scars. Purnima obviously has found a way to come to terms with it.

MARCHING DOWN THE RADCLIFFE LINE